


Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree

by Neftzer_nettlestonenell



Series: The Don't Series [1]
Category: Robin Hood (BBC 2006)
Genre: Alternate Timeline, Alternate Universe - Robin Hood, F/M, Gen, German occupation, Nazis, WWII, channel islands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-03
Updated: 2015-09-11
Packaged: 2018-04-12 19:09:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4491324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neftzer_nettlestonenell/pseuds/Neftzer_nettlestonenell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a little known (or perhaps little-remembered) piece of history where, from July 1940 to May 1945 a certain archipelago of islands north of France, but yet British Crown Dependencies, and therefore 'British soil', were invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany.<br/>Among other evils practiced there were the building and operating of four concentration camps on the island of Alderney.<br/>It was a time in which the British people were fighting a war that involved long separations from family; soldiers endured (and also practiced) battlefield atrocities; those on the homefront sacrificed luxury items, and later, even essentials. The closer it came to May 1945, hardship and deprivation were rampant on all the islands. It was a war that no one thought would ever happen after 'the war to end all wars'. But it was not the Third Crusade. It was World War II.<br/>For the residents of the Channel Islands, their upper government officials and any/all military withdrawn by the British prior to the invasion, it was a time of hunger and privation, of an oppressor's vise-like grip on the populace. It was a time in need of, a time ripe for...Robin Hood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [glorious_clio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_clio/gifts).



****__  
"Don't sit under the apple tree, with anyone else but me...  
_Don't go walkin' down lover's lane, with anyone else but me,_  
_Not until you see me, not until you see me marching home."_  


**Channel Island of Guernsey -** _What sort of night was it?_ Well, don't be cheeky. It was the happiest night of her life, of course. Marion Nighten (Lady Marion, if you wished to be correct in your addressing of her) stood out by the portico entrance of her island estate and looked (though the night proved starless--moonless, even) for a moment beyond the still-arriving guests she had yet to welcome to her engagement party, and wished herself far away.  
  
Out on the dunes, on the water (how long had it been since she had been allowed out on the water, alone?). Further yet, at sea, at whatever latitude and longitude the war officially stopped; ceased to exist.  
  
America itself was not far enough for that; the Yanks had finally entered the fight. Canada's Yukon Territory, she wondered, would that be far enough? Perhaps some as-yet-unclaimed atoll in the fabled Bermuda Triangle? A mystical, hidden island of coral surrounding a luminous fresh water lagoon? Somewhere navigationally impossible to find--an exquisite place to wait for the world to reshuffle its cards and proper order again be restored.  
  
"My darling, you daydream and forget your hostess duties," she heard uncomfortably close to her ear, its timbre resonating at an intimate pitch from her fiancé, the German Lieutenant Herr Geis Gisbonnhoffer.  
  
The feel of his guiding (and possessive) hand at her waist was unmistakable. Sometimes she even felt it, lingering on her like a permanent spectre, reminding her of his command of her when he was no longer present. What other 'privileges', what additional access would he now expect that their engagement had been announced and publicly celebrated?  
  
She had not yet had the stomach to tell her frail father, tonight, as always, in his upstairs bed.  
  
Though in his current state of old-age dementia (hurried on by trauma) his days of clarity and self-awareness were few, she had not yet brought herself to spoiling those brief periods by trying to explain and re-acquaint him with how their once-peaceful world here had shockingly re-organized itself.  
  
"Dearest," she addressed Gisbonnhoffer, with an appropriately maidenly deference, "I believe I shall step inside and check on the kitchens." She did not wait overly long for his consent.  
  
His answer to her came over the heads of their guests milling about, just beyond the foyer.  
  
" _Ja, Liebchen_ ," he used the common language of most of those in attendance. "Do not be too long!"  
  
  
She saw several among those--her (as she supposed she ought to learn to consider them)--guests chuckle good-naturedly at what they saw as his lover's impatience with her absence from his side.  
  
The house was truly decorated beautifully. Flawlessly. It had not looked so remarkable since before her parents' divorce, when her social butterfly of a mother had been in charge of the family's entertaining, which she had always seen to it was lavish and unparalleled.  
  
Certainly, blackout curtains (an ever-present reminder of the war) hung from the floor-to-ceiling windows of the grand hall, obscuring views of the night and grounds beyond, but the interior was lit by candles and the old converted-to-gas Austrian (yes, the guests would certainly like that) crystal chandeliers. Their soft glow engulfed the scene.  
  
Glasses of fine crystal tinkled in the occasional toast, servers passing fresh flutes on highly-polished silver platters. More servers for one party than she had yet seen in her life. She wondered if King George and Queen Elizabeth engaged so many domestics at Buckingham Palace. Well, she thought to herself, at least the Windsors paid their staff, rather than simply forced them into their labors.  
  
An elaborate ice sculpture adorned the table of German-preferred delicacies. A band (dismayingly, to her) playing only German music was set up in the largest room, whose furnishing and carpets had been cleared away, allowing for dancing.  
  
She was caught off-guard in her reverie by a gentleman guest wishing to dance, and was swept by him into the memorized steps before she could protest to him of her current errand.  
  
Momentarily Marion heard a decidedly non-German voice over her partner's shoulder. "Right-o. Mind if I cut in?"  
  
Her partner proved flummoxed enough for both of them. They had only just arrived on the dance floor. In surprise, he handed her over without protest.  
  
"Not tryin' to be funny," the interloper continued, "but she is my cousin. Right, Pet?" He looked to her for confirmation.  
  
She stared.  
  
He did look familiar, but the Nighten family had no relative connections on the islands. This house and estate had only ever served as their summer home, a spot for seaside holidaying, until the June to July invasion (and her frail father's inability to be moved or safely evacuated) forced them to accept it as so much more.  
  
This new man, her self-professed 'cousin', smoothly replaced the other man, inserting himself into her dancer's embrace, just as the music changed into something more lively.  
This new partner was near in age to herself, and though he wore the expected costume of the night (spiffy tuxedos for most of the men), he seemed to wear it uncomfortably, unfamiliarly.  
  
There was something about the knot in the bow of his tie, though, that tugged somewhere at the back of her memory, though she could not seem to lay her finger on exactly what.  
  
Marion cast her eye in the direction of the kitchens, her original destination. Slowly but surely she noticed they were drifting (rather, he was steering them) off the dance floor, out of the house, and toward the raised promenade that overlooked the formal gardens.  
  
Her one eye narrowed as she further examined this new partner. She had learned, since the invasion, to shutter her mouth and hold her tongue when necessary, and she could not be sure if it were safe (or advisable) to question this chap's assertion of their kinship. Times of war made for strange, and sometimes unexpected, bedfellows.  
  
And then, just as they passed (still dancing) through the French doors and the blackout curtains covering their opening to the outside (the doors themselves open in an attempt to let fresh air into the crowded house), she recalled him: Kommandant Vaiser's local islander driver.  
  
"You are more handsome than the last time I saw you, Cuz," she baited him with her words.  
  
Though she was in his arms, his interest in her, now that he had her, proved minimal. His eyes scanned the darkened park beyond the stone promenade, as if expecting to find something or someone.  
  
"Yeah, thanks," he replied absently. "Let us hope you are not as heavy," and now he did make eye contact, giving her a grin and an eyebrow raise to seal their joint play-acting.  
  
She did not even see the blindfold coming.


	2. Chapter 2

And after the blindfold's rough application (it caught unpleasantly on her earrings), she saw less, still.  
  
Not the sculpted evergreen shrubs as she was handed over the marble rail and passed scratchily through them. Not the four exquisitely landscaped fountains that ran in the east park, nor the statue of di Rossi's "Janus" as she was carried past it, slung over a large man's shoulder like Father Christmas' mythical pack. She began to form an idea that they were on their way into the estate's complex box hedge maze, its impressive eight-foot hedge height, long their head gardener's pride and joy.  
  
At the blindfolding she had been swiftly and efficiently bound, hand and foot. She could have attempted resistance--a scream, even--but found herself too curious: where was this Brit-spoke isle collaborator, her 'cousin', taking her?  
  
And who was this other man he was working with?

* * *

It was not long before they stood her up. As much as a girl bound at the ankles while in high heels could be stood up, and yet be expected to stay so.  
  
"Wotcher got for us, Dale?" she heard another, a third, now ask.  
  
Her ears and nose told her the gate crasher was emptying his tuxedo's pockets of hors d'oeuvres and other finger foods from her party.  
  
She didn't seize the moment to protest, she simply stood, her senses buzzing, wondering what would come next.  
  
She could smell summer: loam and mulch, pollen on the wind, and behind everything else, always, the sea.  
  
All about her a scramble ensued for the scavenged goodies, and the big man who had carried her (judging by the low pitch of the voice, an almost growl) instructed the others to each take an entrance to the maze and guard it.  
  
Unless her senses and memory utterly had abandoned her, she thought herself now situated within the central heart, the target center, of the maze, to which there were five distinct openings (or, if you'd rather, exits). Five, because the landscape architect had been superstitious, high strung, and bored of even numbers. And had once cut himself his own path through the maze when he had forgotten the best way out. So, at least five men.   
  
Even over the hedge, the music from the house could still softly be heard. This would be the sort of scene for lovers, her mind told her. This was where a privacy-seeking engaged couple, a smitten twosome, might sneak for an intimate interlude during their own party.  
  
Someone removed the blindfold. Her eyes did not have to accustom themselves to the light, as without moon or stars there was none.   
  
Not only had the fraying fabric of the blindfold caught on her earring, at its removal it snagged, and her earring tore, just enough that it hurt, that there would be some trace of blood there. She felt the queerly warm oozy drip beginning, with her bound hands unable to blot it away.  
  
The shapes of several men surrounded her, dutifully watching the access points to the heart of the maze. The light from their cigarettes proved the only true illumination of their faces.   
  
It was impossible to tell much about them from how they were dressed, as it was too dark to even discern that, but she easily located the massive man who had carried her across the park, noting that unlike the others, he preferred to chomp on a cigar. Her 'cousin' was only now lighting a match to his smoke. He was closer to her than the others, and the immediate spark of the match's chemical reaction as it burst into flame flared into her eyes uncomfortably, but also, for a moment, seemed to fully reveal the open ground directly in front of her.  
  
There, on the stone bench some fifteen feet opposite where she stood--the one which the lovers in her brief imagining would use--was seated, no, more 'was draped' a man with a face to wipe all others from her mind.  
  
He was lean and tall, no, more 'whip-thin', she thought, though the darkness may have betrayed her eye on that point.   
  
His eyes were clear and quick; his hair was short, as a soldier's might be required to be. He had no smoke of his own, not between his lips, nor his fingers. She had a flash of those fingers, the way they used to absentmindedly caress a certain engraved cigarette case, as though they required always, ever to be busy, to be occupied at something. Those fingers lay quite relaxed, now, unclenched, immobile; at rest. His cheeks and chin were bearded, the color of which was surprisingly darker than that on his head. The beard (of a thickness beyond that of simply not shaving for several days) should have made her identification of him more difficult. It did not.  
  
"You are dead," she said, her eyes snapping to the right of him, and another man, ever at his side. "And so are you."  
  
"I told them not to bind your ankles," the seated man, clearly their leader, responded.  
  
Marion persisted. "I went to your funerals. _Your_ mother," she put the full force of her gaze on the one at the right, "wept so long the surgeon had to order her a draught." She saw him wince more than slightly at the news.  
  
The leader stood and walked to her, himself bending to untie her ankles, then her hands. As he knelt to the ground to remove the scarf used in the binding, his hand, rougher, probably, than she would recall it, for a long moment cupped her lower calf, sliding down sensually (far too sensually) toward her ankle. The callus of his palm picked on her silk stockings.  
  
She knew what he would be thinking: Yet unladdered nylons, new as new could be, their seams straight and unmended, their condition pristine, nearly three years into a harsh occupation? How had she managed that? How felt it to secure them to her garters, to feel how their luxurious form snugged to her inner thighs, how their very existence pointed to an intimacy, an understanding with the devils in uniform?  
  
The music still played. Mellow, now, romantic, even. How many songs had passed since she was taken from the terrace?  
  
He stood. Any questions his inappropriately familiar inspection of her had sparked remained unspoken. "Dance with me, Marion," he said, offering her his hand. His always unrefuseable hand.  
  
She let it hang there. Did not allow hers to join it.  
  
"Robert Oxley, first son of the Earl of Huntingdon," the name she had never expected to hear again, much less herself say, feeling like a foreign language to her tongue, "died while on His Majesty's service three years ago."  
  
"Nay," he disagreed, hand still extended. "'Twas five." His eyes shot heavenward, as if recalling the facts of the affair. "Of extreme coronary distress, the day his fiancée sailed for America."  
  
"So later that month, this walking corpse enlisted--without even asking her opinion, much less her leave to do so?"  
  
"A man needs a woman's consent? To fight for King and Country?  
  
She did not answer his question. "I have the telegram announcing your passing." Ah, she betrayed herself, there.  
  
His intellect sparked to that. He chose to taunt her with it. "But not Bonchurch's?"  
  
She looked to the other man. "No, not Bonchurch's."  
  
"Well, then," Robert agreed. "Perhaps I am dead, but Bonchurch, Bonchurch was only put forth so by his government to ensure that his future clandestine work might remain so. And perhaps, in that work on the Continent, and in his flight from a pursuing enemy convoy, his watercraft was hulled beyond repair, and yet he--and some other friends--found their way here, a welcoming port in such a storm?"  
  
"When?" she asked of his hypothetical strings of 'perhaps'es.  
  
"Four months ago."  
  
Marion recalled the night quite clearly. The sirens, the dogs. The searchlights on the beaches. "We thought someone had broken out of the Alderney camps."  
  
"No," piped in her 'cousin', the one called Dale. "Someone broke into the islands. And that someone..." He threw his hands out to indicate the others, "was us."  
  
"Very well," she replied, as though indifferent to this news. "You have taken your time to come calling."  
  
"A man can hardly stand to miss his own engagement party."  
  
She threw him a hard look.  
  
"What?" he asked, that old impudence all over him. "I do not recall our engagement being broken, Marion, only, slightly bent. Or have I gone and queered your pitch, just as you were hoping to commit bigamy?"  
  
A rough-looking blonde man chimed in. "Illegal, that. Even among the Krauts, I've heard."  
  
"Royston would know," Robert informed her. "Upon news of his death, his wife swiftly moved to marry her lover."  
Royston. That name rang a bell. She put it together quickly, from the obituary and newspaper clippings (most of which, long ago she had memorized).  
  
"Yes," he saw her thoughts, the understanding as it blossomed in her eyes. "We are all of us dead men."  
  
Her gaze shot from face to face around the hedgerows. The sum of the downed training plane stood all about her: Robert Oxley, Mitch Bonchurch, Allen Dale, Richard Royston, William "Wills" Reddy, and the large man, Iain Johnson.  
  
Then there had been no accident, no Saintly Six; 'heroes before they got the chance to enter the fray'. All six were present and accounted for, and certainly, most certainly well into said fray.  
  
Robert continued speaking on Royston's wife. "Fortunately, the government offices found some--inadequacy--in the new couple's paperwork, and the 'bereaved' Mrs. Royston found that should she do so, she would not receive her proper widow's pension."  
  
"Though," interjected Dale, "I am not sure why he should want her back, after cutting such a caper. And over his dead body, too."  
  
The blonde man grumbled something to himself in reply, under his breath.  
  
Robert no longer waited for her to take his offered hand, he reached for hers. In doing so, his fingers ran into the sizeable gem, an emerald, she wore on her left hand. His mood, until then, moving toward convivial, shifted immediately into icy cool.  
  
"So," he challenged her, "the stories are true."  
  
"Stories?"  
  
"That you wear a certain Mrs. Stein's--a certain current occupant of the Alderney camps--well-known bauble as a love token from your lieutenant." He all but spat the last few words.  
  
"Robin, I--" she did not know what she was planning to say.  
  
Cuttingly he stepped on her words. "Oh, it is 'Robin' now, is it?"  
  
She held her tongue. She would offer no explanation in exchange for harsh treatment. The past years here on Guernsey had shown her how anger could stopper a man's ears, willfully make him limit his comprehension, his capacity for sympathy.  
  
"The lads," he went on, "are worried of you, but I said, I promised them, that if I could but speak with you we would know...whether we dealt with you as an enemy, or an asset." Always the effective speaker, he turned his head toward her, almost as if for emphasis. He had not studied law for nothing. "But I see now that I do not know. That sussing out your loyalties--knowing your heart--is no longer the child's play I once knew it to be." He added a virtual knife twist to his conclusion, "not the child's play I once so happily knew it to be."  
  
"You know," said the man called Wills, his voice even, but his words threatening, "they have a word for collaborators that's not very nice."  
  
"Yeah," agreed Dale, "'collaborator'."  
  
Wills threw him a withering look, shaking his head.  
  
"Very well, lads," Robin next spoke as though he were wrapping things up. Turning to her he offered, "please accept my apologies in advance."   
Bonchurch popped the cork on a champagne bottle Dale had apparently also managed to smuggle out for them in his seemingly bottomless pockets.  
  
"Apologies, why?" she asked, her tone laced with irony, her injured ear still throbbing. She reached up to remove the heavy dangle earring, which was only exacerbating the tear. "I cannot imagine what for."  
  
Robin held out his hand to take something from Bonchurch. "Because the best plan to explain your mysterious disappearance from the party involves us, of necessity, seeing that you get quite pissed."  
  
Cheerily Dale spoke up, holding an imaginary flute, "chin-chin!"  
  
Marion took the metal cup (clearly rousted from someone's kit), and in a single gulp drained it, the bubbles, upon swallowing, going straight to her nose. She surrendered the cup for another filling.  
  
"As I recall," she called him out, "you rarely used to drink out of anything less exotic than a lady's slipper."  
  
She did not warn them, as she might have, that it had already taken more than a politely social amount of liquid courage to get herself to the point she was able to even come down to her own party that night.  
  
"And as I recall, you never once offered yours for the tasting."  
  
She did not mention that with this champagne she was now mixing her liquors, or that, should they find they needed more alcohol to accomplish this task, quite an assortment could be found (in quite a healthy--or rather, unhealthy-- amount) hidden in the clothes armoire of her bedroom.  
  
Robin held the re-filled cup. He raised it in a toast. "To you. To your fiancé. To...happily ever after." He took a sip, and handed it back to her.  
  
Even in the darkness of the night she could not escape the black cast of his face in response to his own words, nor be certain which fiancé (himself or Gisbonnhoffer) he did, in fact, pretend to, or genuinely wish well.


	3. Chapter 3

She was allowed to leave.   
  
Though Marion had not seen so much as a single pistol visible among them, she did not feel it likely she could have walked out on the group without their consent.  
  
For years she had known the proper exit path from the maze. Her current state of intoxication did little to cloud her recall of it, but it did significantly impede her physical execution of it.   
  
"Mind you, Pet," came a voice from behind her, "I don't think much of you--or Royston's wife, but I don't think you're even gonna make it back to the house at this point."   
  
'Cousin' Dale appeared from the darkness, giving her a shoulder, briefly, to lean into.  
  
"Can't go all of the way back with you, but really, you would think Oxley would know gentle flowers wot are English ladies don't hold their liquor like Englishmen. Daresay the war's gone and turned his head on the matter."  
  
 _Oh, what I could tell you, 'cousin'_ , Marion answered him in her mind.  
  
"So you knew Robin, did you, before?" he chatted on, less guarded in his speech as he thought her three sheets to the wind and unlikely to recall any of it. "Don't know what good of an asset you'd make us, quite frankly. The things we need, the information and oh, just the... attentiveness to detail required, not really up your alley, is it?" They were nearly to the terrace. "Though your place does seem quite generously stocked with victuals. Miss that, we will."  
  
She stood and attempted to straighten herself without using him as a brace. She was not ungrateful for his seeing she got back, but she had had just about enough of his review of her, of her qualifications and perceived shortcomings. And she told him so. "What you know about English ladies would fit on the head of a pin with room to spare, Allen Dale, so you may shut your commoner's gob," she began to tell him what she had ascertained that night of his life. "You've never been among Society, not in your life, unless it has been as valet to their cars, or servicing their cookers--or a bored wife or two in the bargain. In fact, you've never worn a tuxedo before tonight, as you don't know how to tie a proper bowknot. Robin has tied it for you, his broken finger that never healed properly putting a perfect crease just there." She tried to indicate the spot with her finger, but in her vision the tie refused to hold its position, and she gave up on the gesture. "So you may take what you think of me, or what you do not, and...and you may go and piss on it for all I care."   
  
She had always tied those knots for Robin, whenever he had let her. And he had always let her.   
  
"Now," her clouded mind could think of nothing else to do, and so it fell back on courtesy, "I thank you for seeing me back to the house."  
  
She did not see Dale's initially gob-smacked expression, his moment of being unexpectedly impressed by her acuity, nor the humor he tried to choke back at her grandly thanking him on the heels of so vitriol-filled a lecturing.   
Charmed, chastened, and more than a little overwhelmed, he melted back into the shadows before they were seen together.   
_Score one for English ladies_ , he thought.

* * *

"Oh, what fun, what fun this will be..." sang out Kommandant Vaiser from his place on the terrace steps at the sight of the returning Marion. Only moments before he had been deep into what appeared to be an intimate embrace in the dark with Eva Heindl, a native islander of German descent, a pre-Occupation member of the Nighten household staff, and (still, actually) Marion's best friend on Guernsey. Eva was blonde and buxom and beautiful, and she was always invited to any party the Kommandant attended. Her enthusiastic enjoyment of his company could, at least in part, be explained by the needs of her own ailing mother and large family (most of her siblings still school-age), and the privileges such enthusiasm could, in such times, buy one.  
  
The Kommandant himself never seemed particularly curious about the root of such 'enthusiasm', only the satisfying results of it. He was a master manipulator, a keen manager of people and paperwork, and an observant plotter who lived to accrue dirt on others and then set them up to fall.  
  
Currently, the islands were his chessboard, and the people on them--German or not--his play pieces. And he was proving a cutthroat competitor.  
  
So of course he was chuffed beyond reason at seeing Lady Marion, the bride-to-be of his lieutenant, smashed to the point of being green about the gills on the night of her engagement party.  
  
She could only hope that he had not marked the presence of his own driver walking her across the park and back to the house. Hope that Eva's tongue and other bits were tempting enough to keep such a steel-trap of a criminal mind fully occupied.  
  
The Kommandant, with a faux generosity, offered to see Marion back into the party. He was now all but humming at his juicy discovery of her.  
  
Eva had her, helpfully steering her by the arm.  
  
"Where is he, where is the lieutenant?" he asked around among the guests, attempting to drum up the largest spectacle possible under the guise of concern. And drag poor Marion back and forth pointlessly throughout the house, when in her state she was barely fit for sitting still in a chair.  
  
When they found Geis he was coming out of the kitchens, where he had obviously gone to search for Marion.  
  
"Ah, yes," the Kommandant called for Gisbonnhoffer's attention. "there you are! We have found her, no fear," he laughed to the others present. "Just a short case of cold feet, no doubt..." He showed his teeth in an expression that telegraphed an almost feral enjoyment of the situation.  
  
"Marion," said Geis, concern showing between his brows. "I have been looking for you."  
  
The Kommandant grabbed her upper arm away from Eva, and coolly thrust her in Geis' direction. "I think it is just about time for the happy couple to have a dance." He looked around for the other guests' support. "Don't you all?"  
  
Everyone clapped their agreement.  
  
The band began to play a new song, and Geis walked her to the center of the floor, never one to refuse his commanding officer, nor let down an expectant public.  
  
"I am very happy tonight, Marion," he told her, his voice sounding unfamiliarly full of an almost pent-up sentiment as they began to dance. "That is, you have made me very happy."  
  
She missed a step and bumped gracelessly into his chest. He had been looking down at her, had been close enough to see her eyes, feel the unsteadiness in her waltzing gait. His eyes registered concern, and then something only somewhat less than outrage.  
  
"Marion, you are drunk!" he hissed it with indignation, his eyes scouring the room to try and sort out which others of his guests might have noticed.  
  
"It is," she had not planned on what to say, "only that I am--that I was--so very looking forward to tonight. I--I fear I have over-celebrated." She let out half a hiccup and attempted a look of penitence.  
  
His expression registered a moment of suspicion, and then a turn as he switched himself into an almost parental role. "Come with me," he instructed her, leading her slowly (so that she might not wobble) from the dance floor by the hand. He walked her to the kitchen so that the guests would not have to see them disappear up the main stair onto the second floor and the bedrooms. They used the winding servants' stair as their access instead, a hard climb when one's balance and depth perception are gone.  
  
"This is not how I saw the evening," he spoke to her, his tone low so as not to have the staff overhear. For a moment he stopped above her on the steps, the narrow steps (not wide enough for his foot) and the steeper-than-usual risers increasing his size over her so that he looked a giant in comparison to where she stood.  
  
"I had thought--I had hoped that tonight would prove," he cut himself off when he saw her nearly swoon backwards, the dangerously precipitous stairway below her. He tried to manage getting around her to take up a new position at her back. He had his foot to the step below her, the narrow walls thrusting the two of them almost tightly close. She felt her back to the railing-less wall, the warmth of him at her front, very near. His leg on the higher step bent at the knee, making his height so near her own, the proximity of his face, his eyes and mouth almost distressing.  
  
Below, around his neck and collar, sat his bowtie. But there was something wrong with it. It picked at her scattered mind. Something was missing. It was too impeccably knotted. Smooth and perfect to the point of being immaculate. This was not the right tie she should be looking at.  
  
Gisbonnhoffer glanced up the stair, and then down. They were alone. Marion listed slightly to one side and he caught her with his right arm, ensuring that she did not fall, but he let the moment progress until he had her in something akin to a 'dip' in dancing, and the rescue clench he had begun turned into his mouth warm and full, exploring, even, on hers, gin and champagne-soaked, sloppy and (as usual) not fully engaged in the pastime.  
  
She tried not to let her cloudy mind take what he had begun to say to its logical conclusion. Tried not to borrow tomorrow's troubles today, but the kiss made it impossible to gloss over where he had expected the night to end.  
  
She felt a gag start in her throat, not sure she could stop it from its natural fruition.  
  
Apparently, he felt it, too.  
  
He removed his mouth from hers, terminating the kiss, though with obvious regret, and sighed as he slipped his left arm under her legs and ended the question of whether she could complete the journey on her own power, instead carrying her up the stairs and toward her room.


	4. Chapter 4

Geis was to the door of her room, his hand was on the white porcelain knob. Out of nowhere--possibly, from somewhere out of the past, Marion's father stepped forward. He was in his gentleman's dressing gown, his pajamas showing only slightly from beneath it. He was quite nattily clad.  
  
"Herr Geis," Sir Edward Nighten said, concern at what he saw before him written deeply on his face. "I thank you for bringing Marion upstairs, but, it is not seemly for you to be in such proximity to her boudoir."  
  
Gisbonnhoffer's eyes showed his shock at finding the elderly man lucid, much less up and about.  
  
"Sir Edward," he replied, speaking, in his surprise, with uncharacteristic deference to the English Lord and retired Parliamentarian, "I am only seeing Marion safely to her room. She has--" Geis stalled out as Marion slipped down from his carriage of her onto her own two less-than-steady feet.  
  
"I can see," Edward commiserated with the German lieutenant. "I will handle this from here," he promised, sounding something of a stern and disapproving parent, and waving the other man off. "You had best rejoin the other guests below." Her father re-adjusted the lapels of his own dressing gown as though they were on a tuxedo jacket.  
  
Geis looked over his shoulder at Eva who had taken the open staircase to the second floor to check on Marion. "Have the kitchen staff bring the strongest coffee they can brew, and some cheese to fill her belly and soak up the champagne. You will see to it personally that she is able to be brought back down in time for the toasts. Thirty minutes. No more."  
  
Eva, used enough by now to being ordered around by Germans, though she no longer wore the uniform of the household staff, did as she was told, descending the stairs to the first floor serving kitchen.  
  
Edward was already bustling along with Marion into her room and toward her bed. He did not seem to have heard Gisbonnhoffer's limitation on his daughter's recuperation.   
In Edward's lucidity even his strength seemed to have returned to him.  
  
"My darling girl," he said, seating her on the edge of the mattress. "You cannot go on like this much longer."  
  
Marion looked at him and thought she would cry. It would not be hard to do so, her emotions already quite near the surface from her intoxication. Her dear father, here--actually here--in the room with her: knowing who Geis was, where he himself was, seeming to even be aware of the dire circumstances she had gotten herself into in these last, hard years.   
  
He sat down on the bed next to where she lay, to tuck her in. Edward leaned toward her to help her lower onto the pillow and she grabbed him in a fierce hug like she had so often as a little girl in their London flat when he would come in to comfort her after a nightmare and turn on a light to scare the monsters away.  
  
"There, there," he crooned, patting her in the hug. "I must speak to Robin," he advised her, "about keeping you out so late. In such times it is not good for your health."  
  
She felt a coldness stretch over her at the mention of Robin's name. It had nothing to do with her earlier encounter with him in the maze, or any of her still befuddled feelings about it. There was no way, surely, her father could know or even suspect about their meeting.  
  
"Do not worry," Sir Edward assured her. "I shall not tell your mother you have only just arrived home when I go back in to her."  
  
And so she was wrong. He was not lucid as to where he was. Only, who he was; a father finding his daughter has overindulged. A father who loved his child, who missed his wife. Who, even in his occluded, fractured mind hoped to protect Marion from the likes of Herr Geis Gisbonnhoffer.  
  
"I love you," she said to him from her spot on the pillow, her hand to his lovely, darling face.  
  
Edward took her hand in his and patted it. "Tomorrow morning I shall make you a cure for what will ail you," he promised. "It will not be pleasant, but it will give you something in common with more than one of my best men in His Majesty's Light Dragoons." He smiled, and seated himself in the cozy overstuffed chair near her bed to watch over her.  
  
He was asleep before her, but only just.

* * *

Marion dreamed, remembering herself somewhere, somewhere else, somewhere without Nazis...Somewhere.   
  
**Outside Lexington, Kentucky, USA** \--Marion has been in America long enough to spend an entire season on the American Equestrian Circuit. It is now winter, and she is stabling her horse (and herself) with friends she has made during the season, at the Bertrand-Otto Stables located on 350 acres just outside Lexington in the more rural Nicholasville, Kentucky.  
  
She has learned to eat her grits with only salt and butter, and to not only eat, but also look forward to a good Hot Brown. She has found that the bonnet of a car is known as a hood, a dinner is more often than not a massive hot luncheon, and there is no such thing as posting when trotting in a Western saddle.   
  
The language of the locals (originally an all-but-indecipherable-to-her drawl) has begun to sound more natural to her ears. She can even, as for a parlor game or a lark when in public, impressively mimic it, banishing her round English tones altogether.  
  
In her time away she has won more than one competition, and appeared more than a few times on local Society pages [due to the cachet of having honestly come by the title, 'Lady'], which she dutifully clipped and sent to her mother in London, as she knew they would please her, and also make her laugh, her crème de la crème of a mother (a bit of a snob, actually, if her hauteur entirely earned by her bloodline) reading an American Society column. "Upstarts!" the former Mrs. Nighten would no doubt proclaim, but drolly, to the other storied ladies with whom she often took tea.  
  
The snow is falling over the fields and runs of the farm, its painted black horse fences picturesque against the white covering.   
  
Marion can be found in the barn, near the stall bearing the placard of her own horse: Saracen's Beau, a mahogany brown Thoroughbred jumper who is her every pride and joy, and the reason she felt compelled to travel to the States.  
  
She begins to groom him now, double tied with quick-release knots, and out of the stall, his slender legs and feet where she is concentrating her attention at the moment.  
  
She is in a quarter-length winter wool coat in a caramel plaid with a red stripe run through it, and warm trouser pants, not unlike ones Katherine Hepburn is often seen in, though the screen star's are rarely stuffed into a pair of Wellies in an effort to keep them out of horse manure and other barnyard perils. Marion has her hair secured back in a snood to keep it out of the way of her work, and her complexion shows the ruddiness of her happy exertion in her cheeks and bright eyes.  
  
A radio, used for the barn, is on, playing big bands tunes that are all the rage; Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey.  
'Beau is obediently eating his oats for the evening (it is early evening, the day's light not yet faded away), which is one of the few things he does obediently. Particularly if Marion is not the one requesting something of him.  
  
Another human has entered the barn, one of many on the vast property. It is Fred Otto, the eldest son of the Otto family, who with his father and other family own and operate the farm, stables and its prestigious breeding operation.  
  
He has settled himself on a bench across the way, nearby the tack and trophy rooms, where he is able to best watch Marion at her work. She is so involved in what she is doing, so in love with both rote task and animal that her brain has not fully registered his being there, nor the sound of his truck's engine as he pulled it up to the barn.  
  
It would not take a mind reader to discern that he is utterly enamored of his English boarder. Either that or he just really, intensely, likes her horse.  
The Ottos, though they closely run their own operation, and all have professions, are wealthier than many among the upper nobility back in Britain. Their ways are informal, although not without certain unbreakable social mores (many of which Marion is only just beginning to sort out), and their hearts exceptionally warm, and worn (as she thinks all Americans' must be) right on their sleeves.  
  
She has found her time here interesting, stimulating--no topic out-of-bounds (yet), few thoughts had that are not immediately shared. As she is exceptionally well-liked by the family entire, such behaviors have done nothing but charm her.  
  
"Marion," Fred spoke, and she noticed his presence. "I swear by all my mama taught me, you are the canniest horsewoman I know."  
  
As always, the smells of the barn, the hay, the wood and even the animals coalesce inside Marion as if shorthand for peace and pleasure. She lets her cheek rest against Beau's side and smiles. "You flatter me, Fred. But I know you. Your acquaintance with the equestrian world is far too broad for you to pay me such a compliment in good faith."  
  
He ignored her rejection of his assertion. He knew an intuitive rider when he saw one. And she was exceptional, even at that. Saracen's Beau had been the darling of the Circuit that year, and his rider an even greater sensation. "What do you say to going to see the Derby next year?" It was rather early to start making such plans.  
  
"What, track racing?" She was used to his ways, to his being around, their conversations as always pleasant, relaxed, family-like.  
  
"Well, not just any race."  
  
"No," she agreed, having been in-country long enough to know there was no correct answer but this, "not just any race."   
  
She looked away from Beau and over to Fred on the bench and smiled. She did not know how much longer she might stay in America. More than once it had occurred to her that she might stay indefinitely, especially with things in Europe looking the way they were. She worried about her family there, her father particularly. He had not moved past the divorce as might be best for an older man who had only an absentee son, a daughter abroad, and membership to his club in his life.  
  
"Maybe we might go as something..." Fred was saying. "Something more than just colleagues?"  
  
"Friends?" she suggested.  
  
"No, Marion," a sort of edge came into his voice. It was not angry or violent, but more impatient, as though she was not grasping something he was trying to impart to her. "As the man who might hope to marry you? Who might, even now, here in this barn hope to have won something of your undying affection...your interest, at least?"  
  
She stopped him well before he could drop to one knee and spoil his dungarees in the stable's muck. She stood away from Beau's side. She stood a little straighter, with the memory of what she was about to say. "I can't marry you, Freddy."  
  
He took a moment, during which he actually seemed like he was turning over what she had just said. No wonder she liked him so much. He had actually been listening.   
  
"Can I ask why?" he shrugged his shoulders in her direction and put out two up-turned palms. "Is it a class-thing? Would your family give you trouble about that? Or is it just me? Is the farm not tempting enough? You can't lie and tell me you've been unhappy staying with us here. You can't convince me that we haven't...had our moments."  
  
"No! No. I am...already engaged."  
  
His eyebrows almost shot off his forehead. Surely they disappeared well up into and under the bill of the cap he was wearing. But still, in all of it, he could not suppress some trace of a smile; of bewilderment, perhaps, but a smile. "How can that be? We two have been inseparable for...months, now, and you have certainly never mentioned a fiancé." He gestured to her hand, holding a hoof pick. "You wear no ring. Have you got a ring? I would have remembered a fiancé," and then he added, "My mama would have remembered a fiancé."  
  
Her voice seemed very small to her when she spoke. "It is only...that we are having a spat."  
  
His next question was a fair one. "And do they usually last so long?"  
  
"I do not know. This one has proved somewhat...unprecedented."  
  
"Is he here? Is he home? Do you hear from him?"  
  
"He has not written."  
  
"But he knows where you are?"  
  
"He would have no trouble locating me, I think." Then she tricked herself into thinking that she had forgotten the next fact: "He has enlisted." She had not.  
  
"Marion," Fred began, half-laughing with disbelief. "You are...some kind of woman. I don't even feel like I can be mad at you. You just--you--you take a man's breath clean away. I'm body and soul in love with you right now, and you stand there looking like a girl that needs a good, solid," he scratched at the late day stubble on his jaw, "kissing, telling me you're promised to some...mystery GI an ocean away. And I should be angry, I should feel used and I should even doubt you're telling me the truth, but hot-damn it if the whole mess of it don't make me that more in love with you."  
  
Relief washed over her. She would not want this to end up in a quarrel, or worse, a tear-stained moment.  
  
She reached deep into Saracen's Beau's personal grooming kit bag (it was leather and stamp-monogrammed, a bon voyage gift from her brother) and withdrew a cloth from inside. Knotted there on it so that it could not be lost without the cloth being also lost, was a ring. A Cartier ring. A sapphire as blue as his eyes, (though at the time he had said as hers) its brilliant facets seemingly as unending as waves on the ocean that separated its giver from its recipient.   
  
On either side of the platinum art deco setting two long-cut diamonds sat. Four, he had told her, one for each of our children, predicting their future as was so often his game.  
Fred, though no expert on precious stones, with his family's upper class social standing still no stranger to them, was more than impressed. "So, but for this," he indicated the ring in its dusty, mottled state of having not been cleaned or cared for for some time. "You would accept me?"  
  
Marion wadded the cloth up in her fist, disappearing the ring that told of a promise made a quarter of the world away. "I would accept the farm, Freddy," she teased him with the truth. "With a clear heart I can at least say that."  
  
 _Moonlight Serenade_ played on behind them. The snow continued to fall outside. The sun withdrew its last ray, and they laughed.


	5. Chapter 5

"Marion. Marion! You must wake up!" Eva Heindl had set her up in the bed, was shaking her quite vigorously.  
  
Marion whimpered, not wanting to leave the bed, the warm memories her dreams had been sharing with her--though they were conflicted memories.  
  
"We have ten minutes, _Cherie_. Ten minutes only to get you decently sober to stand for the toasts. You must drink this coffee, and the cheese... _Sacre_!" Eva gave up expecting Marion to sit, and backed her up to the headboard, propping her there like an oversized rag doll (Marion at present just about as flopsy) as she attempted a repair to her best friend's hairstyle and lipstick.

* * *

Again, Marion fell into the dream, into the past.  
  
She ran to the barns, ran without breath without thought without conscious direction. With the crisp paper in her hands. The telegram in her hands.   
  
She had not even opened it. Her hands shook violently as she attempted to bridle Beau, but she gave up. She would take him without.  
  
She would ride, she would jump, she would let him take what there was of her emotions: fear, loneliness, panic, and simply let him have them, to use as he would.  
  
He ran, he jumped, he galloped like a giant storm was about to erupt from the heavens above them. 

And then, he stumbled.  
  
As they were in a paddock not frequently used, (having jumped innumerable fences and various hedges to get here) and therefore unchecked for rabbit holes, he stumbled. And though he hadn't wanted to let her down, hadn't wished to part her from him, he threw her.  
  
Marion, her mind told her as she parted with his back and flew onto the ground, _you horse's arse, you can hold on to nothing. Nothing!_ And a small voice in her cried, _Robin!_ like an echo.  
  
The paper was still in her hand. The telegram.  
  
Saracen's Beau had halted, and he looked down at her, scolding her. 'Look at what you have done to me,' his eyes said to her, 'I am lamed on account of this foolish, unopened missive?'   
  
As he stood he babied his right foreleg, not putting weight on it. 'Why are you such a coward?' he asked her. He tried to nip at the paper she held. 'I could eat it for you, protect you from whatever so frightens you about it.'   
  
She raised herself on one elbow and rolled/dragged herself over to check his ankle. His precious, jumper's ankle.   
  
It was not encouraging news. A sprain, at the least, at the very least. She could not, in good conscience, walk him back to his stall, now. Not even should she yet be ready to return.  
  


* * *

When Fred found them it was nearly sunset. She had seated herself with her back to a tree, and Beau was still tenderly favoring his leg as she fed him the occasional apple from said tree.  
  
It was decided Fred would go and return with the trailer to ease Beau's journey back to his stall.  
  
"Mama's awful worried about you. Said you tore out of the house like a fright. That you'd gotten a telegram."  
  
Marion looked at the beauty of the rolling green hills and the clear, crepuscular sky preparing for nightfall. "Pose your question again, Freddy," she asked him.  
  
"My question?" he asked, never pretending he did not know what she was referring to. "Naw, Marion," he shook his head. "I may be a betting man, but even I can't ask you that question again."  
  
"Why not?" She was confused.  
  
"Well, you kept something from all of us. Something important, for a long time. And I can't imagine that your GI fiancé is such a bad guy. That you could have told us. At that you could have broken off your engagement. But you didn't. Which means there's something going on, there. And now you get some sort of news today and take off on Beau here like the Devil himself is chasing you, and you steeplechase the poor ole boy right into a sprained ankle? But here I come to find you and you're not even upset about it, not even wanting to talk about it. About Beau. Instead you ask for a renewal of my proposal. Which means: there's something going on, there." He gave her a long look, from which she did not turn away. He did not seem angry or frustrated. Only, almost, sad. As if for her. "What did your telegram say?"  
  
She answered him honestly. "I don't know." She held it out, as yet unopened.  
  
He did not ask permission, he simply took it from her, opened and read it.  
  
She looked at him, expectantly.  
  
"Read it?" he asked.  
  
She nodded, her hand to Beau's face. The smell of small green apples and horse in her nose.  
  
"Military plane crash STOP No survivors STOP Robin listed casualty STOP Sympathies Clem STOP"  
  
She did not react at all to his reading of it. Her hand did not move, her mind did not turn, her lungs did not expand. She did not feel cold: she was not frozen. She did not feel hardened: she was not turned to stone. She was wax, she was a Tussaud: the perfect non-living representation of herself, without mind, without senses, without pain.   
  
She knew now the reply she could send home, had this telegram required one: 'Love affair crash STOP No survivors STOP Heart listed casualty STOP Save condolences all my fault Marion STOP'  
  
"It is from your brother?" Fred asked, recognizing Clem's name.  
  
Marion did not answer, but buried her face into Beau's nearby warm neck, the regular, strong beat of his beastly heart a comfort, as she could no longer feel her own.  
  
Fred watched on, knowing he would have bought her three dozen Cartier rings and sprained his own ankle repeatedly to have her clutch at him (even in her grief) similarly.  
  
"I have to get to New York," she said, raising her head, the tracks of her now-coming tears streaking down her grimy-from-her-fall-in-the-dirt face. "To the Consulate, there. They will have news."  
  
He took a step toward her, and she did, then, agree to the comfort of his arms about her.  
  
"We will find out, whatever there is to find out, Marion, together. And then we will bribe, bully and scheme to find a way to get you home."   
  
Ah, but he wished, he wished in good conscience he could bring himself to ask that question again.  
  



	6. Chapter 6

When Marion awoke for the third time that night (the first of those times that she did so deliberately), she could only vaguely recall the toasts Eva had effectively steered her downstairs toward, the in-German well-wishes like clangorous nonsense being shouted at her as she stood obediently next to Geis. The glasses in the guests' hands morphing into something quite other as they raised and toasted with them, their voices echoing the toastgiver's in beneficent thoughts to her and Gisbonnhoffer's joint future.

Playing it back in her mind, the whole scene brought to her memory more than one chilling newsreel of pre-war speeches Hitler had given. " _Heil_ , Geis!" she imagined the guests tonight had been shouting, " _Heil_ , Marion!" " _Heil_ the future Frau Gisbonnhoffer!"

No one had seemed to be the wiser about her condition (not including the Kommandant, who persisted to toast and re-toast, all the time his eyes googling at her over his champagne flute as she would have to drink to each new well wish, each 'congratulations').

But she had made it through.

At present she was still teetering on tipsy, more toward tipsy than not. And her bedside clock showed her (at one-thirty in the a.m.) that if she did not hurry, she would prove late for the most important appointment of her day--er, night.

She stepped to the armoire and, avoiding even looking at the bottles hidden in it, pulled out something to wear on her covert excursion: very well, jodhpurs and a checked camp shirt it was. Though how she would explain such an outfit were she caught in it at this time of night, she knew not. Well, best not to get caught out, then.

With herself dressed and her destination set, Marion's thoughts were freed to turn to other contemplations. Her mind (still a bit on the foggy side) could not help but fill, overly fill, even, with the idea, the concept that Robin was not, in fact, dead. Without humor, she noted that it was really, quite really very much like something he would do. Some elaborate prank he would pull. It would make a great tale to be told at his club. Some Tom Sawyer - Huckleberry Finn moment wherein he is revealed to be looking down, quite alive, upon his own funeral proceedings. In such a scenario she was not quite sure whether she was cast in the feisty Becky Thatcher role, or as the disapproving Aunt Polly.

Marion marveled that she did not feel she could be happier about it, more festive; that Robin was not only alive, but somehow, miraculously near her. The world had seemed to become so very vast in light of the war; acquaintances, friends, shipped or evacuated to far-flung corners of civilization.

Her own self, sequestered here, few places quite as out of the way as this one. And yet, here is Robin. By chance, he seemed to indicate, by purest serendipity.

As she raced across the park, through occasional stands of trees, and skirted the small woods, her mind could not help but gloomily remind her; it is one thing to feel very dirty and very alone (as she had these past months of occupation as they turned into years). It is quite another thing when you come to know someone else (someone once so very, terribly, almost ridiculously, important to you) is watching on as you slowly suffocate your soul. That person, that someone else, with no understanding, no comprehension as to why you do it, or even whether you are doing it willingly or under duress.

Marion wondered if she had been as he had expected to find her. (For it seemed obvious to her that Robin knew whom the Marion was his men were absconding with from the party.) _Had she seemed to him old? Worn? Used-up?_ She knew she had not seemed fun. Not light and jolly, as they used to so often be when together, not able to be charmed.

Perhaps he had thought to encounter her acting as more of a war widow, draped in black for him, still mourning his untimely passing. Grief yet held about her as she had learned her lesson, accepted her responsibility in the killing of him, in having, by her trans-oceanic journey, driven him to go for a soldier.

But she was not about to commit _suttee_ over Robert Oxley, to throw herself on his death pyre, a widow-sacrifice. Firstly, they had not been married, though he had wanted, randily, to play at it often enough as though they were. She had never been one for such make-believe then, and would never have taken on such an unearned title now. She had never worn the mourning black, not beyond the funeral itself.

Secondly, her life had shown her swiftly enough upon her return home that she could not just throw it away, nor box herself up, solitary in her grief. Only scant weeks after Robin's funeral, her father's staff at their summer home here on Guernsey had sent a telegram to her mother that Sir Edward had suffered an accident and needed family, needed someone to aid in his possible recovery.

And certainly the former Mrs. Nighten was not about to forsake London for that. It was not the proper season for seaside holidays, she had informed her daughter, as though Sir Edward had picked not only a poor time to be visiting the family's island estate, but also a poor time to incur such an injury. 

_God save the world--God save us all--from silly women_ , Marion thought to herself, recalling the at-the-time utterly self-absorbed behavior of her mother.

* * *

Marion had arrived, and with some minutes to spare, her wristwatch showed her. She was at a little-visited corner of their property, where the crumbling remains of an old stone windmill, once used for grinding corn, yet stood. The inner base still surprisingly solid, though quite leaky up top in the rain; the windmill vanes half-rotted, unable anymore to turn the grinding stone inside. But there was a nice, deep half-cellar to it. It was a place no one attended upon, no one paid attention to--a shell of what it had once been, now utterly without utility, without purpose, hollow and forgotten. And in that, perhaps, she felt a kinship to it, a feeling of something communal with it.

When the Germans had first landed, she had recalled its existence to her mind, and packed all that she could--that she had thought might prove useful in days to come--onto a cart, hitching the estate's Percheron draft horse, Dovecote, to it, and had pulled it to store here. She had left enough things behind at the house to satisfy the German notion of 'contraband'; two radios, plentiful books and record albums to make any Nazi contented that the Nighten estate, when searched and their _verboten_ belongings confiscated, had not already been secreting plunder elsewhere.

And so it was all here, now, in the deep half-cellar of the windmill, so many things: some jewelry, glass jars of home-canned goods, spices, seed for future planting, candles, matches, hardy clothing made for hard use, several coats and slickers, several pairs of her brother's boots, his camping kit. And things she never would have guessed in her wildest dreams that she would treat so roughly, house so primitively: her record albums, her record player, their second best radio. 

If you had told her the day would come that she would take to having to live so, that her mind would begin to intuitively to understand how and where to stockpile such things, she would have laughed.

Certainly she had not realized until it became necessary that she had, apparently, paid attention when being told the best way to outfit an air raid shelter, a bunker of sorts.

Nearby, even, on an untraveled inlet, so tightly overgrown that it was not possible hardly to see it from shore, much less imagine that one could navigate the tight narrows of it, she had stowed (on dry land) the boat her brother, Clem, had been lazily building (no reason to rush the process) on his occasional holiday trips to the island. At his last visit, it had been nearly finished; only paint and lacquer were needed. But it had never been registered, therefore it was not sought when all boats were commandeered, not found and burned, or pressed into the service of the occupying Germans. Because as far as anyone beside herself, Clem, and her father, no one recollected it.

Tonight she stopped herself from going the short extra distance to check up on the boat. She had to get herself straightened out, sobered to the point she could do what she had come here to do.

Two a.m., and it was time. She was hunkered into that cozy-tight (as it was not raining tonight) half-cellar of the old windmill, all the tools she needed right within reach of her hands. She had taken out two quilts from where they had been wrapped tight in a tarpaulin, to sit on once they were placed on top of a small pickle barrel. She lit the mantle in the kerosene lantern on the crate before her, let the glass drop and adjusted the flame.

Facing forward, she pressed down on the transmit button of the once-chrome-colored (now tarnished) microphone, and spoke.

Marion's voice came out deliberately in the altered tones and pitch of one of Fred Otto's sisters; pure Southern drawl. Her mastery of it was flawless: " _God Save the King, Vive la France, and God Bless America. It's just now two o'clock...and welcome to the Nightwatch_." She placed the needle to the record she had chosen to play (deliberately by a Jewish performer, despised and repudiated by the Germans), and disengaged her finger on the microphone's broadcast button, letting the music go out over the airwaves.

She sighed. She had no way of knowing how many (if any) listeners she might have. But she would wager, even with the betting likes of Fred himself, that more than one islander was up, even at this time, like her so many nights, in distress, unable to sleep, and possibly tuning his--or her--illegal radio to the frequency Marion was broadcasting on.

She heard a scratch near the un-illuminated cellar steps. Her mind flared, her reflexes still somewhat slowed by the liquor, but she had her hand to the small "just in case" pistol she kept near the turntable.

It was unlikely she could have shot straight in that moment, unlikely that she had the pistol grabbed in time, had the source of that giveaway noise truly wished her harm.

In German she asked the intruder to identify himself.

"You are not very welcoming," came the response in broad, undeniably English tones, "to this, your--playhouse? Secret club? What--" he obviously could see the supplies stacked haphazardly about her, "your cave of pirate treasure? For I know enough German, _Fraulein_ , to know those were not at all kind words of greeting you just threw at me."

Robin Oxley stepped out of the shadow and into the circle of light, near to where she sat at the microphone. He looked, on balance, much as he had earlier that night. Of course he did. Why should the separation of but a few hours markedly alter his appearance to her?

  
She had been wrong about his hair. Although short on the sides, it was quite long on top, only combed back, off his face. She should have known: vanity, for him, had always won out over practicality. At least in matters of grooming, and, as she recalled, apparel. His barber's tab had often been a fright, not to mention his haberdasher's. How his father, the Earl, had frequently blown his top upon receiving his son's outrageous bills in the late afternoon post.

She found herself distractedly wondering if her own clothes did not appear quite grubby--unsightly, even--from her time down here.

"I have had quite a jog of it, Marion, trying to keep up with you," he told her. "I came to the house, only to see you rigging yourself for an expedition. So, of course I had to follow." He smiled. "Reconnaissance now like second nature to me."

She did not reply, never taking her eyes from him, but again depressed the transmitting button on the mike, the original song, and another one after it now done playing. "News and more news, and a full recap of BBC broadcasted news from earlier today coming up," she said, before returning the broadcast to the record.

Robin pulled in his chin, as though what he heard was entirely unexpected. "So you are not listening at all. You are...transmitting..." His head remained slightly tilted to one side, his eyes, ever on hers.

Again, she gave no answer where he had left space for one. Her hand for some reason still lay in plain view on the pistol, though she was not sure why. "Spying and following people is now, you say, in your nature?" she asked him. "Is it also in your nature to crash parties of powerful and dangerous men, your sworn enemies?"

"What, that?" he actually smiled, that crack smile that told you he was pleased with himself, and oughtn't you to be also? "We could hardly pass up the opportunity to spy on all those Jerries in one place."

She did not smile in return; her reply was smooth and delivered as instructive. "You are new to the islands, you do not realize: we are not so populous here than an odd accent, an unfamiliar face, will not arouse suspicion."

"Unfamiliar face?" His tongue came out toward his lips before he bit down on the lower one, still smiling. "Is that what I am to you, then? Unfamiliar?" Something of the grin fell out of his smile, and was replaced by what she remembered: a perilous (to her, to her heart) intensity. "Odd. For I know your face. Tracing its outline in my mind is the first order of my Catechism. Creating words to relate to my fellows the exact blue of your eyes? My second."

She did not want to be, but she was the first one to look away, turning her eyes to her stack of record albums, it suddenly feeling quite important that she knew which one she would be playing next.

"Did you think," he asked, referencing his unannounced appearance here, "I was your fiancé--just there? That is, your other fiancé? Is that why the German salutation?" He leaned over from where he stood, his face searching to see hers from where she had turned it away from him. "Did you fear he had come to catch you out?" He looked significantly at the pistol her hand still rested upon. "To see why you left his bed in the middle of the night?"

Her hand pulled back from off the gun as though she had been slapped. "No," she said, low and harsh, meaning to answer all his erroneous assumptions, even the one that so stung. Her jaw was tight as she spoke. "Geis is a gentleman."

"Ah," Robin remained maddeningly casual. "You have not seen him, then, enjoying his work at the camps."

Her jaw tightened further, her teeth ground against each other. She raised her eyes to him, to show him that at such a remark she seethed.

"But," he continued on blithely, "'twas more than simple curiosity that brought me after you. I bring an engagement gift: your newly beloved's orders. To your ears before they even reach his. Courtesy the Kommandant's driver, my man, Allen Dale." He gave a little bow, as though she might applaud his accomplishment.

"Why should you care what Geis' orders are? He is not so high and important a cog in the grand scheme of the Occupation, of the Reich."

"He is called to serve a nearly continuous round of duty on Alderney, at the camps, until further notice." Robin allowed his demeanor to alter as he studied her reaction to this news. "Beginning later this very morning, when the written orders will be delivered to him, at, I believe, your home. It would seem, Fraulein, he is to become--or already has become--quite indispensable to Herr Vaiser."

Marion knew she had to break eye contact with him again, every time she did so seeming like giving up ground in a skirmish, but it was imperative she broadcast the news at the appropriate time. She bent to consult her wristwatch.

As distracting as these new orders of Geis' were to her, she could hardly concentrate on them now. 

She turned the record's volume down and returned herself to the microphone, in her practiced drawl delivering what she could recall (which was actually quite a lot, and quite detailed) of the BBC's earlier news broadcasts, as well as any news that she had overheard, large or small, war- or occupation-related or not about the islands. When she was through, she promised another segment (a repetition of the same items) in thirty minutes, and continuous music until then.

She could feel Robin's eyes keenly on her throughout.

"Oh, I get it," he said, when she lifted her fingers off the transmit button. "'Nighten' watch? And this accent, you believe it will protect you somehow, disguise who is speaking from them?" Derision crept into his tone. "So, what, you watch _Mrs. Miniver_ a couple of times and now you believe you can best Hitler?" 

"Mrs. who?"

He frowned at her question. He had forgotten, there would be no new motion pictures on the islands, much less thinly veiled British propaganda films made to inspired the civilian public. "Marion, if, on a lark, I can clumsily follow you out here and catch you red-handed, what makes you think Gisbonnhoffer--or anyone else--could not? And what; you think they will fail to notice the antenna you have inexpertly affixed to the rottening vane? One gust of wind just so and it will not matter, the whole shaft and the rigging will come down, and your fancy dress game here will be through." The longer he spoke, the more in a temper he became.

"And perhaps me, too? 'Through' as well, you are thinking?" she asked, glad that he now displayed an emotion she could match. "Hoping? To lose an unpleasant reality of a past--whatever? Someone that spooks your men? Makes them fear for your loyalties as you fear for mine?"

"No!" he responded quite roughly, as though he had overstepped some line he had not meant to cross, said something he had hoped to keep to himself. "It is for your safety I--"

She interrupted him, cool and detached as a psychologist, and addressed his conflicted self. "Is it hard to feel something for someone you fear has gone to the other side? Is it hard for you to reconcile me to the past? To that Marion?"

Robin took a deep breath, his voice pleading with her, yet frightened by her tone of disconnection. "It is only, you must help me understand what has happened here. Why you are here?" He threw his arms wide to indicate the island of Guernsey, "and not home in England, where you belong, or even, as I had long believed you, still in America, an ocean away from--this?" Then, in almost a whisper, a tremble to his voice, "Marion, what has gone so very wrong?"

It was quite possible he was asking for an answer that would necessitate going back five years to that day she had told him she was going to America.

But she did not, in all honesty, feel up to having that discussion tonight. It had already been quite a long day. And the answers to, much less the explanations of their problems of five years ago seemed all but unrecollectable to her now.

She began to recount the particulars of her current enforced sojourn on the island. "Quite early in the spring of '40--you had only just been buried--we received word that my father, who had been staying at our vacation home here, had been thrown from Gypsum, and that he was not recovering as well as one might expect. He was...absentminded, scattered, and at times incoherent. And his physical injury was proving long-term. My mother had already divorced him. I came to see after him. By June all his time abed had led to a persistent pneumonia." She closed her eyes for a moment as she shook her head. "He would not have lived through an evacuation. By late July," she shrugged, "Gisbonnhoffer had taken a liking to the house--to me, to the estate, and had quartered himself in it."

"And Sir Edward?"

"His body is largely recovered. He is...rarely cogent. He spends his days in his study, or in his sunroom, in the library listening to the gramophone, looking at pictures of mother and Clem. Both of whom in his broken mind he usually believes are dead."

Robin's eyes scrunched about the edges, hearing of such circumstances.

"He knows me," Marion continued, wishing Robin would not react to the story so, making it harder to tell. "But he retains no understanding of our present situation."

Robin's response was quick, and avidly curious. "What of his writings? Why have the Germans not taken him to persecute? To publicly pillory? It is usually their way."

Marion looked at her wristwatch to hide her eyes momentarily (more ground lost in their skirmish), though she did not yet need to be concerned about the time. "They scripted a recanting of his monograph. He signed it willingly, unsuspectingly. It was printed to great fanfare in more than several of their propaganda pamphlets. As his home is host to Nazis, to their parties, as his daughter will marry one, seemingly at his consent, Edward, Lord Nighten is of greater use to them as a propaganda tool than a martyr."

Robin's ire was apparent. "And yet you stood by, letting him so unknowingly betray and perjure himself?"

"Yes!" Marion shouted with an outsized ferocity, Robin the first person she had ever had to defend these actions to. She was gripped by a far stronger emotion as she spoke than she had been in a very long time. "I not only stood by, I saw to it he signed the retraction! I played editor of what had been written by Goebbels himself so that the syntax more closely resembled Father's own!"

"I do not see," Robin's eyes rolled heavenward, to the dark night sky visible through gaps in the windmill's roof. His breathing was ragged, this news of her father, hero to many, example and champion of Right--of Sir Edward's downfall--paining him as much as had she cut him for real. 

"I do not see," Robin said again, in a tone that would be furious if it were not so beseeching for enlightenment. "In doing so, you helped dismantle all that he stood for, all that he fought to bring into the light. To allow them to coerce him into repudiating all that he knew to be right and good and worth sacrificing everything for.

Marion only watched him, she did not respond. She knew what he was going to do next, before, perhaps, even he had decided on it. He was going to make her listen to it, going to speak those words, here, in the midst of this Occupation, in the voice of a man she had loved. This dead man, now living--those words originally written by her father: a man once living, now all but dead.

Robin quoted from memory her father's celebrated monograph, his voice and delivery eloquent, as only he knew how to be. " _For it is in just such teaching that we must ask ourselves as individuals, as a nation, as a world: if we do nothing to assist our fellow man in such times, be he lesser in status, or even, as so erroneously suggested by Herr Hitler's propaganda machine, lesser in intellect--are we, ourselves, not less civilized, less the champions of justice, and made lesser men by such deliberate oversight and inaction? For to my recall, was penned long ago in a Book far better than Mein Kampf; 'greater love hath no man than this: than that he would lay down his life for his brother.' Let us then, as a nation, prepare ourselves for just such a sacrifice to come, and even, hurry it along in our eagerness to right the grave and multiplying wrongs we can no longer ignore as they are enacted upon our brethren across Europe._ "

Robin paused for a long moment, the words of her father heavy with integrity, with truth and, even, with heroism. "He weathered the isolationist backlash when first that was printed, did he not? He stood by his work. He did not renege on his beliefs, his convictions. Not even when--not even--"

Marion could hardly breathe. "Why did I do it?" she asked Robin rhetorically, roughly, angrily, even. "Because in the end you hope the truth will out. You hope the good guys will win. And because assassinating a reputation is better far than assassinating--watching a person..." she felt unshed tears clogging her throat, "knowing a person will be..." _damn him for being alive to even ask this of her_ , she sucked in breath, "than being party to losing the life of someone you love; to abuse, to torture, to unwarranted cruelty. He is a man, Robin. He is my father. I chose his life--our life--over a reputation. Over an articulated ideal."

Robin hung his head, knowing the deed already long ago done. His tone was low, bald with defeat. "I do not know that I would have chosen the same."

Neither pointed out, though it hung in the air between them, that due to Marion's choices her own reputation (and her life) would also be irreparably damaged, were being so even at this moment, even on this day.

Time passed as the half-muted record played on. Neither spoke for a space, as if to let the dust of harsh realities and disputed choices settle.

Finally, she broke the conversational silence. "Then I truly hope you shall never love a person enough to have to make that kind of choice." She looked up at him, his head still half hanging. "Or have to live with a person you love having had to make that hard, hard choice for themselves."

Robin did not respond, but brought his eyes back up to hers, their edges wincing. Whether over her choices or Sir Edward's resultant downfall she could not be sure. Her gaze had returned to its familiar steadiness. It was now his turn to retreat by looking away.

"I brought this," he said, as he produced her earring from earlier that night. "It must have fallen from your hand as you crossed the park. It seemed best that you have it, lest it be found--or not be found--and raise suspicion."

She stood to take it from him, walked the one and a half steps to his side.

He saw the tearing now, in her earlobe, the color of the blood the blindfold's removal and snagging had cost her. It birthed a momentary tenderness in him.

"Kiss it better?" he offered.

She ignored the come-on of a suggestion. "You have chastised me for my engagement to Geis, Robin. You have then chastised me for my work here. I fear you must reconcile your divided mind about me. Am I to be punished for a collaborator, or taken to task as a daredevil, an unnecessary risk-taker in the Resistance?"

"I do not know," he replied, his eyes still studying her, particularly now that she stood before him. "It is as if I do not quite know you. This you." One of his eyes narrowed, but his expression was not entirely sour.

Looking at him, at his always-next-door-to-a-lark face, Marion felt ancient. She felt an hundred years old, heavy with unwanted wisdom, unwanted insight. "We are different people now, Robin. Strangers. And if you say we are not, I say: beware. For I am. I have played too long at faking love. I fear I shall no longer know the difference between the stage and front-of-house."

A frown came to his brow. "You say you have grown feelings for this German?"

She smirked, but bitterly. "None that are tender."

Lest her remark encourage him, she continued on as before. "Do not pursue me here, Robin. I am a lost cause. Abandon me to the invader, as Britain did these islands. Make your tactical retreat," she brought her lips together in a tight, thin smile. "Go on with your work here as though we had never reunited, for I must surely go on with my role as though I never encountered you. I must forget tonight. Perhaps tonight's champagne," and gin, and... "perhaps tomorrow's headache will help me do so."

He inclined his head to one side. "So you believe a freedom fighter cannot, also, have a love, a love life, secret and separate from his work?"

"I don't know," she told him truthfully, certainly never having thought on the notion before. She shrugged. "I have never met a partisan."

He laughed. "But look around you, Marion!" He indicated the cache of things she had hidden here, her radio transmitting equipment. "You are a partisan! _Mrs. Miniver_ be damned. You are the stuff legends are made of."

She stood watching, amazed as always at how his emotions could turn on a dime.

At his proclamation, he suggested a peace offering. "I shall send Wills to the Nighten-gale of this Nightwatch, if you will allow me to show him this place. He will repair your antenna. Perhaps be able to conceal it better."

"Thank you," she said, with genuine feeling. Her voice dropped so low as to almost be an undertone. "I have... missed your ways, Robin."

He stopped and cocked his head to show slight suspicion of her statement. "I do not think you could be too regretful over our parting."

"What do you mean?"

"Marion," he said, as if it were necessary to remind her, "you left me for a horse."

She scoffed at his simplification of their separation. "Beau was not just any horse..."

Robin's lips mimicked what she was about to say perfectly; he had heard it many, many, many times before. 

"Saracen's Beau, by Swallow Den out of Cordelia Anne, was not just any horse."

"Was?" he asked, curiously concerned.

She didn't answer that question, instead her mind turned to the emerald ring still on her left hand. "You know," she began, his eyes following hers to the jewel. "I would gladly return it to her, and the finger it adorns, as well, should she wish it." She thought of the times she imagined her finger black with rot and death from the wearing of this ring. Adorning the finger that supposedly trailed most-directly to her heart.

"Its return would do Mrs. Stein little good now," he told her, his outrage at her having it not so intense as earlier in the night, "and cause you grave trouble, I should think, should you lose it."

He did not ask where his ring was.

"So we are to be strangers, then?" he looked to her for confirmation of their set plan of action.

She nodded her reply. "Two people newly introduced, perhaps. But blank slates to one another."

"Very well, then," he agreed to her terms. "But let us dance," he looked to the rotating turntable, repeating his request from earlier in the night, "for what could be more normal among two new acquaintances, or even two old--perhaps estranged--friends?"

She did not move beyond his reach quickly enough, and he had her caught into his embrace, dancing to "I'll Be Seeing You" in the negligible open space there in the windmill's half-cellar. 

He did not mention that she danced very similarly to a girl he used to know quite intimately before the war. He did not say that he did not recall the last time he had danced with a woman in pants, or that Mrs. Stein's stolen ring with its heavy emerald, the gift of his enemy, of his rival, was chafing at his shoulder where it rested on her hand. Robin did not speak. He only danced. He only held her to him.

_"I'll be seeing you, in all the old familiar places/That this heart of mine embraces, all day through."_

It was only for a moment, Marion told herself, promised herself, only for a moment that she would close her eyes, remember-imagine the parquet dance floor at the Ritz in London, the sound and feel of other couples dancing around them. The look of Robin in his tuxedo that last night they had danced there together, the color and scent of the orchid he had brought her to wear, her favorite. The new clutch purse she had brought out with her for the evening, which she had lost, and how he had gone from table to table without shame on his knees searching for it on her behalf. And how, after closing, the management and the band, so charmed by his exploits (and the clutch found--back in Robin's roadster, never having even been brought inside--her compact and lipstick yet in it) that they agreed to play one more set. Just for them, just for that couple, alone on the dance floor: that Robin and Marion.

She kept her eyes shut too long. She felt the warmth of his breath, the texture of his beard, unfamiliar, as he brought his face to hers, his lips to hers--not aggressively, not passionately, even, but slowly, timidly, almost, as a first kiss might be. A soft, gentle knock on the front door. _Was anyone home? Might I come in for a cuppa?_

  
She thought to expect that he would taste of other women, of strange places he had traveled without her, of exotic tobaccos and lessons learned she had no knowledge of. He didn't.

He tasted of contrition, of comfort. Of warm firesides and safety and...a wish, perhaps, for reconciliation.

 _Was anyone home to that knock?_ she wondered. She let another kiss happen. Allowed a tightening of his arms about her. Three small tears rolled down, one quickly after the other, out of her right, still-closed eye.  
  
Robin alive. Robin, here. 

Her life had suddenly become tremendously more complicated.

She opened her eyes. They were only dancing now, the kiss not quite answered, yet not quite ignored. He held her. She had not the words to tell him his arms were the only substantial things on earth supporting her now, in this moment. But for them, but for them...

 _"I'll see you in the morning sun, and when the night is new/I'll be looking at the moon, but I'll be seeing you."_ The Nightwatch's broadcast was nearly over. Marion Nighten was still somewhat tipsy. That is how she would explain this lapse to herself tomorrow; letting him dance with her. Letting herself believe, really believe that this truth before her was possible: he was alive. Tonight was a lost cause. A monument to bad judgment, spurred on by too much alcohol. Tomorrow it would be as she had told him: they were strangers, and she must forget she had seen him, must forget his resurrection. Must carry on playing her part.

But for the length of this song, for this moment, _What sort of night was it?_ Well, don't be cheeky. It was the happiest night of her life, of course.

**}}-- > The End <\--{{**

The Adventure continues with " _Don't Go Walkin' Down Lover's Lane_ " Story II of IV in _the Don't Series_

 _ **Our Cast**_  
Robert "Robin" Oxley...Robin of Locksley, Earl of Huntingdon, aka Robin Hood  
Lady Marion Nighten...Lady Marian of Knighton  
Lieutenant Herr Geis Gisbonnhoffer...Sir Guy of Gisborne  
Kommandant Vaiser...Vaisey, Sheriff of Nottingham  
Sir Edward Nighten...Sir Edward of Knighton  
Allen Dale...Allan-A-Dale  
Mitch Bonchurch...Much  
William "Wills" Reddy...Will Scarlet  
Richard Royston...Royston "Roy" White  
Iain Johnson...Little John Little  
Fred Otto...the Booby; Count Friedrich Bertrand Otto von Wittelsbach, of the German duchy of Bavaria  
Eva Heindl...Eve of Bonchurch  
Clem Nighten...Sir Clem of Knighton, an OC, Marian's older brother

 **Author's Ending Note:** Please know, this is not an in-depth work of great research and time spent. It is meant to convey a feeling for the times, and the places mentioned, but certainly not believed by the author to be a fully-accurate and historically impeccable rendering thereof. [would that I had the free time to pursue such!]  
To wit: for any inaccuracies of geography, historical timeline, politics, government or culture, please accept my apologies in advance.  
If I have referenced a song that would not have been in the sphere of these two people, or mistook something about the British Channel Islands, or have proven faulty (though vague, I assure, on purpose) over how Marion is able to broadcast the Nightwatch, or even have electricity available to do so at a remote windmill, or how, at the arrival of a telegram to the US about Robin's death she is yet still able to return home, crossing the Atlantic during a dicey time to do so and still manage to attend his funeral--it is all done in good faith, in the hopes of writing a good story -- as is the use of any inflammatory terms toward any groups or nations that were in use at the time, such as 'Jerries'.  
Additionally, please note; in any future postings of this AT/Uberfic, Channel Islands' geography is set to be bent to my will like worms bend space in Dune.  
So if you must write or post to say how wrong I've gotten it all, do so, but know that the above is my official mea culpa on such matters.  
We shall not speak on them again.

**Author's Note:**

> *This is a completed story that I will be posting out chapter by chapter.
> 
> The definitions:  
> Uberfiction - I don't know much about the RH fanfic-verse, but in the Xenaverse, this term refers to taking the essence of your main characters and putting them somewhere else (in time, or geographically, or both). The plot lines may or may not be familiar. The arguments, the interpersonal character interaction, always is.
> 
> Alternate Timeline - Taking characters and plot from one story and putting it in another time period (most recently see the British version of "Sherlock" with Benedict Cumberbatch now playing on PBS' "Masterpiece Mystery!", or, for an older version, "West Side Story" as a re-setting of "Romeo and Juliet" (in fact, this is a quite popular stunt to pull with Shakespeare's plays).
> 
> The challenge:  
> To take Robin and Marian and their troubles/the essence of their stories and characters from BBC's Robin Hood and find another place and time to drop them in and play with them there. (However, not as an entirely 1:1, so not every character exactly as on BBC, not every plot exactly. A mix-up mash-up, if you will.)
> 
> [Because this is not your mamma's Robin Hood, some names have been altered slightly in their spellings and whatnot, but none so that it should prove too hard to tell who is who.]


End file.
